bob

"Though living things vary greatly in complexity and size, their energy usage falls between 3 and 90 watts per kilogram of biomass. For comparison, a MacBook Pro is supposed to draw about 12 watts when operating from its battery." - bob via Bookmarklet

"A detail from the beautiful exhibit specimen of Uinticrinus socialis at the Sternberg Museum. This specimen was found by George F. Sternberg in Logan County. See other close-ups of individual crinoids in this specimen: HERE, HERE and HERE. "Their bodies were about the shape of half an egg, with an opening in the center, and ten arms radiating from the margin. These arms were three feet long, with feathered edges. Over the mouth, too, were smaller arms used to comb off into the mouth the tiny animal life of the sea, that was strained through, and caught in the meshes of the feathered arms. My boys found hundreds of these crinoids in the Chalk on Beaver Creek, Kansas, called Uintacrinus socialis. We enriched many Museums with them."" - bob via Bookmarklet

http://www.oceansofkansas.com/... http://www.oceansofkansas.com/... - bob

"Since peaking at $4.1124 on July 11, the average cost of a gallon of gas has receded by 80.45 cents." - bob via Bookmarklet

I'm assuming this is biggest drop as a pure factor of price and not percentage. - Jonathan Coulton Scoble

Get some what? - April Buchheit

i dont know, but it might involve firing a machine gun... - bob

"Sailing from the icy St. Lawrence River to the warm Mediterranean Sea every four weeks as follows: Montreal, QC (Day 1), Gioia Tauro (12), Salerno (13) and Genoa (15), all in Italy; Marseille, Fos sur Mer terminal, France (16), Montreal (28). Hanjin Ottawa, Seattle, WA (Day 1), Vancouver, BC (2), Yokohama, Japan (11), Hong Kong (15) and Yantian, China (17), Yokohama, 2nd call (20), Seattle (28). Hanjin Boston, Los Angeles, Long Beach terminal, (Day 1) and San Francisco, Oakland terminal, CA (4), Seattle, WA (6), Pusan, Korea (16), Yantian, China (19); Kaohsiung, Taiwan (20), Shanghai, China (22); Kwangyang, Korea (24) and Pusan, 2nd call (25), Los Angeles (35)." - bob via Bookmarklet

"The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who've been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure. The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated." - bob via Bookmarklet

"Police in the desert city say specialized kidnap rings are snatching suspected criminals and their families from their homes, running them off the roads and even grabbing them at shopping malls in a spiraling spate of abductions...Last year alone, Phoenix police reported 357 extortion-related abductions -- up by nearly half from 2005 -- targeting individuals with ties to Mexican smuggling rings." - bob via Bookmarklet

"It sounds like a title for a show of David Copperfield, David Blaine or Criss Angel. But it isn't. It's the latest practice that big shipping companies do to their fleets. Why build a new ship, when you can extend the old one. Such measures may seem extreme, but the €40 million cost of the job is just a fraction of the €650 million - and years of labour - needed to launch a new ship." - bob via Bookmarklet

I was on that ship a few months ago. Really interesting stuff. They kept looping the video of it being extended on the television. - Benjamin Golub

"Instead of the standard panels mounted on racks that have dominated solar for the last 20 years, Solyndra's cylindrical solar modules collect sunlight more efficiently across a broader range of angles and catch light reflected off the roof itself. The solar cells also contain no silicon, which has been a costly component of most solar systems." - bob via Bookmarklet

"There are bulletproof leather jackets and bulletproof polo shirts. Armored guayabera shirts hang next to protective windbreakers, parkas and even white ruffled tuxedo shirts. Every member of the sales staff has had to take a turn being shot while wearing one of the products, which range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $7,000, so they can attest to the efficacy of the secret fabric." - seems a bit like snowcrash - bob via Bookmarklet

"Steve Chesley (JPL) reports that atmospheric entry will occur on 2008 Oct 07 0246 UTC [Oct 6 at 10:46 p.m. Eastern US time] over northern Sudan. The impact location has been narrowed down to 21N, 33E, at 2:46 UT, which is in in northern Sudan. The probability for impact is between 99.8% and 100%. The asteroid will track from the northwest, so observers in Europe, northern Africa could possibly see the atmospheric entry phase. Depending on the composition the atmospheric impact and breakup should release ~ 1 kiloton of energy. The asteroid is now within ten lunar distances from the Earth-Moon system. H = 30.4, ~ 3 metres " - bob via Bookmarklet

"Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out. People talk about whether a new emergency unity government is needed and if the EU would fast-track the country to membership. On Friday the queues at the banks were huge, as people moved savings into the most secure accounts. Yesterday people were buying up supplies of olive oil and pasta after a supermarket spokesman announced on Friday night that they had no means of paying the foreign currency advances needed to import more foodstuffs...Iceland's cheap labour force, t - bob via Bookmarklet

Iceland's cheap labour force, the Poles and Lithuanians, have left already - there's little point in sending home such a worthless currency, and the tourist season is over. Iceland is on its own. - bob

"Ireland and Greece have had to rescue all their banks." - really? all of them? - bob via Bookmarklet

Why is this man crying? - Jim Norris

I thought those were drunk goggles. - grant

INVISBLE BINOCULARS! - Robert Haas

? - torque

trust me, everything's gonna to be fine - bob

how very fight club of you, but are you referring to the end of credit or a hot girl? - Clare Dibble

haha, neither really but i do think its a bit similar to the current financial stuff :P - bob

"Guess the time is ripe to create a whole new state. That's the thinking up here along the border between California and Oregon, where 12 sparsely populated, thickly forested counties in both states want to break away and generate the 51st star on the nation's flag - the state of Jefferson. You can see the signs of discontent from Klamath Falls to Dunsmuir, where green double-X "Jefferson State" flags hang in scores of businesses. You can hear the talk of revolution at lunch counters and grocery lines, where people grumble that politicians to the north and south don't care...The number of registered users of a decade-old Web site advocating partition has suddenly shot from dozens to more than 900." - bob via Bookmarklet

It's always someone else's fault, and everything will be better once we get rid of those Other People. - Amit Patel

Wow, 900 people. No one listens to me either. Maybe I should get a state. Hey, if California split into 50 states, we could take over the senate! - seth

Somebody let the bear into the Subway. - Mike Reynolds

on the video it looks like the bear pulled the door open itself - bob

Yes, you're right Bob, my bad. Looks almost as if a person was behind that door. But on closer look, you're 100% right. Thanks for the catch. - Mike Reynolds

is it what? - April Buchheit

kind of long but interesting video (not their commentary at the start/end) - its surprising that they dont try to sell more of the stuff - bob via Bookmarklet

"When Larry Levine helped prepare divorce papers for a client a few years ago, he got paid in mackerel. Once the case ended, he says, "I had a stack of macks." Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California's Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel -- the "mack" in prison lingo -- was the standard currency...There's been a mackerel economy in federal prisons since about 2004, former inmates and some prison consultants say. That's when federal prisons prohibited smoking and, by default, the cigarette pack, which was the earlier gold standard." - bob via Bookmarklet

With fried onions, white pepper, and steamed rice, mackerel is awesome and nutritious. Rich with protein and cyanocobalamin (the last vitamin isolated, B-12), Mackerel also has the most omega-3 fatty acid of any fish. Too bad no one, not even prisoners, eats mackerel. - John Lam

I eat mackerel. It's delicious! - torque

""Then we did an analysis to say, 'How many killer whales would it take to kill 50,000 otters?', and it turned out it was, like, three," Estes said. "I think they just came in, ate the otters, and left. We happened to be there to see it."" - bob via Bookmarklet

The report claimed Jobs was rushed to the emergency room after suffering "a major heart attack." Apple shares, which have in the past been shaken by the question of Jobs' health, climbed more than 5 percent in early trade but retreated as the rumor gained momentum on Internet blogs. The stock at one point was down more than 2 percent, and hit a 17-month low of $94.65. After Apple denied the report, the shares recovered, climbing to $104.04, up 3.9 percent on Nasdaq. - bob via Bookmarklet

"The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago, scientists say... "With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength," said Ed Smith, NASA's Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system," added Smith. ...But, Smith said, the Ulysses mission's recent results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, show that "we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated." " - bob via Bookmarklet